


Happy Ending

by archea2



Series: Old Tales Twice Told [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Use, Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of Snow White, closer to Grimm than Disney. </p><p>Written before S2 and partly inspired by ASIP, so it lacks Jim and the apple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Ending

  
 

  _1\. Once upon a time, there was a woman who was bored._

In all of Sherlock’s cases, there is a story before the story. Hidden, broken, waiting for him to join the sharp edges together and make it whole. 

 

He is drawn to each original story like a child raising his hopes come bedtime, and so far has managed to piece them all. But in Mother’s case, the tale stays all cracks and shatters. The tale won't let Sherlock pick up the pieces, because he does not want to hear the whole story. 

He keeps one shard in a corner of his brilliant mind, so that it strikes up a glint now and then, beckoning him to the past. 

His sixth Christmas, and he has just found that he can see eye to eye with the pear-shaped keyhole on his parent's door. The hole is filled with snowy morning light, and as Sherlock peeps into the light, it shows him Mother standing before an old book shelf and putting a needle to her arm. Years later, he will remember how the old books, their dusty black backs turned to the scene, set off a pure white gleam in the syringe hovering above the red dot, where  Mother’s skin had broken. 

It is eerie and new, this sight, and Sherlock gazes on in captivation until a tall hand lands on his neck, shoving him aside, and his father shatters the scene.

_2\. She gave birth to a son, and he grew up tall and beautiful. And doomed._

 

Father increases the surveillance, and Mother dies a little.

 

Growing up, Sherlock can feel her eyes on him, scanning him with a hybrid of fear and longing — because he is so, so much like her in his reckless brilliance, yet still young enough to escape. And she does not want a reminder of what she was. 

When he strikes sixteen, she pushes him away. The apple of her eye, and she tells him to go to London and be a bright boy there; tells him in a jagged hush that she will keep his heart with her, in her, or he too will fall in love and grow bored to death.

Sherlock goes to London. It does not take five years before he is standing in front of a mirror, his mother's shadow upon him as he suffocates and bares his arm to yet another red dot. Mycroft increases the surveillance but Sherlock escapes once again, finding unexpected shelter in New Scotland Yard.

"I now live among the little men," he tells Mother in the mirror. "They’re hard workers, but they’re no good. They trudge and trudge, and sometimes they come up with a nice gem, but then it’s soon over and I lie down and shut my eyes. What else is there?"

Her eyes gaze back at him, filled with clarity and taut silver nerves, unanswering.

_3\. And then the prince came, and shared the apple._

Others have tried to shatter the glass casement in which he lives. Some, like Donovan, by throwing the proverbial stones. Others, like Molly, by tapping a shy finger. He smirks at them behind the hard glitter, not caring if they bleed or curse. 

Until John Watson sends a bullet across two layers of glass, and Sherlock finds himself wide-eyed and shaking for the first time in years. 

This must be another story in the making, but so far Sherlock hasn’t made head or tail of the shards. The shards say tea for two and finger food, and watching John watch the little people on telly without being bored, and racing across London, and sharing the mirror with John on their morning shave. There is no way the tale makes sense, and Sherlock wonders if one day, he will be able to look back and say: this is it. Our story.

But then it would have to end, and he does not want that. Better let let John type it on, then, one letter at a time, and let it have a happy open ending. After all, they live in the modern age.


End file.
